Really, I started with JFK, but the oldest existing conspiracy theory that I know of is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Briefly, in 1864, a man named Maurice Joly wrote a novel called Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu about a plot against Napolean III. In 1868 a German anti-Semite named Hermann Goedshe 'borrowed' much of the storyline from that book, and wrote another book called Biarritz. In his book, the plot was Jews trying to take over the world. The Protocols, published in 1897, took whole sections of Goedshe's novel, and claimed to have been taken from Jewish world leaders. Czar Nicholas II used the protocols to blame all of Russia's problems on the Jews. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin both used the Protocols to justify wholesale slaughter of Jews. After that, other conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Holocaust was orchestrated by Zionists in Germany as part of their plot to achieve world domination--yes, some Jews were killed, but only the ones that refused to go along with the plot (hmm. let's think about this. You give me a choice of dying a horrible death, or being part of a group that rules the world. I'll have to think about that. Can I get back to you later?).
The JFK plot, to be honest, I have to admit, my personal belief is that there is a lot more to that story than we've been led to believe. On the other hand, the main argument against a conspiracy in that instance is that no one has broken silence, 45 years later. You would think that somebody would have left a confession in a safety deposit box ("On the event of my death, I want the world to know that I helped assassinate John F. Kennedy. At the time, I believed it was the best thing for my country..." yada yada yada). Can you imagine being part of a plot to kill the president, and not being able to tell anyone about it? But a lone gunman, choosing the right vantage point, and the right time, could avoid Secret Service protection, without having to worry about whether one of his cronies might chicken out and spoil the whole deal. In any case, there's a lot of talk about the JFK assassination, but if there was more to it than Lee Harvey Oswald, we will know about it until one of the original team confesses--and, even then, there will be spin doctors ready to discount that account. I think most of the talk is just fueled by the idea that, with all that protection, how could one man have gotten to the president?
The 9/11 theories are, IMHO, mostly fueled by past events that have led to war. In February of 1898, an explosion wrecked the USS Maine in Havana harbor, thus launching the Spanish-American War (Cuba was, at that time, still part of Spain). Later, after the war, it was determined that the explosion was entirely internal (as in, one sailor decided to sneak a smoke in the powder magazine?). But the battle cry of the Spanish-American war was, 'Remember the Maine!" In May of 1915, the Lusitania was carrying armaments from New York City to England. We were, at the time, officially neutral in what would later become known as World War I, but, our government was sympathetic towards the British. The German consulate in New York took out a full page ad in the New York Times, warning travelers that the Lusitania was 'smuggling' arms to Great Britain and the the German Navy would never allow those arms to reach England. Several passengers expressed concern, and were assured the American customs would never allow a passenger ship to leave New York harbor carrying weapons. The Lusitania was intercepted by a German naval vessel, and ordered to surrender the armaments. The German vessel fired a warning torpedo. That torpedo, instead of passing across the Lusitania's bow as intended, somehow hit either the compartment that housed the arms that she wasn't carrying, or a nearly empty coal bin(empty of coal, that is, full of coal dust and fumes). The resulting explosion sent the Lusitania to the bottom, killing a large number of people, some of them Americans. We still didn't get involved in World War I right away, but the event definitely helped us along that path. In December of 1941, there was a growing suspicion that the Japanese were in league with Nazi Germany, and that they were planning an attack against us. Of course, we had a pretty good idea that Adolf Hitler wanted us side-tracked in the Pacific, so that we would not get involved in Europe (little did he know, get us mad enough, we can fight on multiple fronts). A message was sent out to all commands in the Pacific warning of the suspected attack, but supposedly, Pearl Harbor didn't get the message until three hours after the attack. Obviously, they say, Washington didn't want Pearl Harbor to get the message. What a lot of people don't understand, is that, yes, we had a pretty good idea that the Japanese were going to attack, but we didn't think they were going to attack Hawaii. We had a base in the Philippine Islands (that we took from Spain in the Spanish-American War) which was much closer to Japan, and much easier for them to attack. Of course, there actually were some intelligence reports that Al-Qaeda was planning something prior to 9/11. Some of those reports even indicated that they might try to hijack airplanes. Those reports were squelched at fairly low levels in the intelligence community, though. In retrospect, it seems obvious that they should have gone all the way to the top--and they should have. But, there was a lot of "chatter" about a lot of different things without any real detail (even the reports that we had of terrorists hijacking airplanes didn't suggest that they would fly the planes into buildings--or give dates when this would happen). Most of the chatter had nothing to do with 9/11. Really, although there has certainly been some odd things about 9/11, to suggest that our government had something to with planning it so that we would have an excuse to attack Iraq is just ludicrous. Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack, and if we had planned it, wouldn't we have used Iraqi terrorists? A lot of people, too, have complained loudly that fire doesn't melt steel. A hot enough fire will, but, burning aircraft fuel doesn't get that hot. What they seem to have missed is that nobody is saying that the steel girders in the World Trade Center melted. In order for the towers to collapse, the girders only had to get hot enough to buckle--well within the range of temperature of burning jet fuel. Also, there has been talk of tower seven being 'an inside job' because in appeared to be undamaged until just before it collapsed. From the outside, anyway; inside there had been a fire raging for hours, but the fire department was too busy with the main towers to try to combat that blaze.
Elvis? Well, some things are just too popular to let die.
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